Various types of balloon catheters have been developed in quest of less invasive treatment methods for various kinds of diseases. Such a balloon catheter as a transluminal treatment device is intended to occlude main blood flow temporarily or semipermanently to examine or improve abnormality that occurs. For example, a conventional balloon catheter used in percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty is described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-285222, in which an expanded balloon is mainly used to dilate a narrowed blood vessel.
For infusion of drugs, cells, or a treatment instrument such as an injection needle into cardiac muscle in which myocardial infarction occurs or may occur, infusion therapy has been considered such that the drugs or the like are directly administered by thoracotomy, or a catheter percutaneously approaches a heart chamber through inferior vena cava, a tip of the catheter is brought close to the cardiac muscle, and the injection needle is inserted into the cardiac muscle via the catheter to administer the drugs or master cells.
The conventional catheter used in this infusion therapy is not intended to occlude a blood vessel, and is thus of a type that uses no balloon. The catheter is usually guided to a target position by a guide wire.
However, the method for directly administering drugs or the like into the cardiac muscle tissue by thoracotomy for the infusion therapy into the cardiac muscle requires opening the chest under general anesthesia and temporarily stopping the heart using extracorporeal circulation, which is highly invasive to the patient.
The infusion therapy in which the catheter percutaneously approaches the heart chamber, and the needle is inserted into the cardiac muscle via the catheter to administer the drugs requires securing a stiff and thick guiding catheter to the inside of the beating heart, which may damage chordae tendineae in the heart chamber to cause postoperative sequelae.
Thus, the infusion therapy into the cardiac muscle tissue using the conventional techniques is incomplete, and essential and more effective treatment means has been desired for myocardial infarction by recovering blood flow in an ischemia area. However, there has been no means for improving an ischemia area that causes myocardial infarction, as well as directly and locally supplying necessary drugs or the like to a diseased area around a body cavity requiring in vivo treatment.
In view of the above described points, the invention has an object to provide a novel infusion therapy.